Welcome to the mid-term break. However long a term is, whether 8 weeks or 16, it always seems that everyone is exhausted in the last week of term. This time has been no exception, and there are a lot of students and teachers who will very much appreciate a hard-earned week of rest and relaxation and recharging of physical and mental energy. Although I know many students, particularly those in Grade 12, will be spending time doing some serious studying over this week, please make sure they do also rest and relax. There is no point working so hard that they burn themselves out!

The ISA testing in Grades 7 & 9 went very smoothly last week and the papers should be in Australia by now – we anticipate receiving the results in mid-December. Camps Week planning is well under way and homerooms have begun discussing preparations, equipment etc. And the Bali crew are almost ready to board their plane, off for a week learning about the Global Issues Network. So, lots going on, as always. Life in school is rarely quiet, rarely peaceful, but that is probably the way it should be. I am sure many parents will agree when I say that it is when our children are at their quietest that we should be most concerned!

Hope you enjoy this issue of the newsletter. If you have any feedback, please let me know. For example, are there any topics you would like to be able to read about here?

In this issue:

Students submitting homework late at night

Parental access to ManageBac

Reporting in Secondary this year

Horrifying stories in Grade 8 English!

A French afternoon out

Dates for your Diary

Photo Gallery

Students submitting homework late at night

Some students are staying up extremely late to finish homework. Some teachers have recently received homework submissions from their students at 3:50 in the morning, for example. This is not acceptable. No one should be working on their homework or studies at that time of the night. Night time is for sleeping.

Ideally, all students will be going to sleep no later than 10 pm. We understand that evening commitments sometimes mean students feel the need to stay up studying later than this, but one of the most useful ways a student can contribute to their learning and prepare for the next day is by getting a good night’s sleep. It would be far better to turn in a piece of work of perhaps lesser quality, but arrive at school having slept well.

Students are expected to complete all work set and prepare well for assessments, but on the odd occasion they may not do this as well as they can. We understand this. However, if they are consistently unable to meet their school commitments without staying up until extremely late, then this a concern and I ask you to discuss this with your child’s homeroom teacher as a starting point.

Please monitor carefully your children’s sleeping habits and make sure they are going to sleep at a sensible time. And that they are not getting up again in the middle of the night to complete schoolwork!

We will be reviewing homework loads when we return after the break, to ensure that we are being fair in the amount of work we are asking students to complete at home.

All Secondary parents should now have received an email with details of how to log into ManageBac. If you have not received this, you can gain access by going to the school’s website, following the link to ManageBac under the LOGIN menu item, and then following the link to “Forgot your password?”. Please be sure to use the email address you have registered with the school. If you have any issues with this, please let the Main Office know and we’ll help get things working for you.

Reporting in Secondary this year

As I have previously noted in this newsletter, we have made some adjustments to reporting this year. There are no Quarter reports, instead parents have been given access to ManageBac and are asked to actively monitor student performance with this. If you have any concerns about your child’s progress, please communicate with their homeroom teacher or the subject teacher concerned.

We will have our whole day Parent-Student-Teacher conferences on the 2nd November. Please note this in your diaries and make time to attend these conferences. This will be a key opportunity for you to talk to your students’ teachers to understand how to help them make final improvements to performance as we head towards the end of the semester. It will also be a chance to hear some of the stories from Camp.

Shortly after we return from these holidays, I will send out appointment booking information so you can plan your attendance on the 2nd November well in advance.

Horrifying stories in Grade 8 English!

Ms Carina’s Grade 8 English class recently spent time learning how to write scary short stories, and she has published a collection of their work in the form of an ebook. Her students are very excited that their stories are being published. In Ms Carina’s own words

“I am proud to present this collection in the form of an e-book, made readily accessible for everyone and anyone who delights in the uncanny and the supernatural. Fear can be fascinating. May you enjoy reading this book! … my students are very excited about this!”

You can download either format through the links below. If you enjoy the stories, I am sure Ms Carina and her students would love to hear your feedback!

Personally, I am looking forward to sitting down with a good cup of coffee and enjoying these stories over the next week.

A French afternoon out

From Monsieur Antoine:

To end the quarter, the French DP students went to the restaurant breton Le Biniou in Tay Ho for a lovely lunch. They enjoyed there excellent crêpes, boardgames and a two hour long francophone session, with various conversations, cultural comments and gastronomical appreciation!”

Rico asking for parental support with his CAS project to create an HIS family recipe collection

One of my favourite activities as Head of Secondary is to take a walk around the school, dropping into classrooms and seeing what students are learning about. The evidence of their knowledge and understanding can be heard in their ideas and dialogue. When I see a group of students working independently, enjoying collaborating on a task that they find meaningful, and enjoying learning, or when a student gives a presentation to parents at a PTA meeting, then I can see the product of the hard work teachers and students put into achieving the goal of enabling “all students to realise their full potential in a caring and positive learning environment”, as stated in our Mission.

In this issue:

Reporting on student progress

Grade 8 Humanities explore the Millenium Development Goals

Introducing the IB’s Approaches to Learning Skills (AtL Skills)

Grade 9 Geography Debate

Dates for your Diary

Photo Gallery

Reporting on student progress

We have made some changes to the reporting process in Secondary this year. One significant change is that we will no longer be sending home written quarter reports at the end of Quarters 1 and 3. Instead, we will be opening up our management system, ManageBac, to parents so that you can keep track of the work your children are doing and their ongoing performance. Teachers are regularly recording assessment results in ManageBac, and many are using this as a vehicle for providing feedback to students as well. You will be able to see this information.

You will receive an email within the next week (before October break) with details of how to login to ManageBac. If you have any issues getting access, ask your child as he/she should be able to help you. Alternatively, get in touch with your child’s homeroom teacher, Mr Daniel, or myself, and we’ll help resolve the problem.

On November 2nd, during the parent-student-teacher conferences, we will be running a couple of workshops to help parents access ManageBac and understand how to use the system. Details of how to sign up for conferences will go out to parents in the near future.

Grade 8 Humanities explore the Millenium Development Goals

Mr Dan’s Grade 8 class have recently been studying the Millenium Development Goals and assessing how successful we have been as a global community at achieving these goals. Here are two very good analyses, focusing on MDGs 7 & 8.

I am impressed at the level of knowledge and understanding being demonstrated by these two Grade 8 students.

Introducing the IB’s Approaches to Learning Skills (AtL Skills)

Discussing how to build AtL skill development into teaching and learning activities and the homeroom programme.

On Wednesday 9th September we had our first Late Start of the year. These are important professional development sessions as they enable staff to dedicate several hours to collaborative planning and dialogue focused on curriculum improvement. On this occasion Daniel Suarez, our MYP Coordinator, led a session on the Approaches to Learning Skills which are at the centre of the MYP and the DP. The AtL Skills are a core part of the skill set needed by students as they face the learning challenges presented by these programmes and the world around them, and we will be focusing on them more and more.

Grade 9 Geography Debate

Learning to debate, and to accept that there are often multiple legitimate arguments on either side of a debate, is an important skill. Mr Brandon’s Grade 9 Geography class recently debated the following statement: “To what extent are the causes of global climatic change natural.” While there was no winning group, the students were diligent researchers looking at both sides and sometimes debating something they did not believe in. However, In Hye said it best to summarize her group’s position, “The causes of climate change are irrelevant, what we need is action to combat the effects!” I have to say I agree with In Hye.

Dates for your Diary

Tuesday 22nd Sept: Whole School Collaborative Sports Day – POSTPONED to November

24-25 Sept: ISA Testing, Grades 7 & 9 only

3rd- 13th October: Autumn Break.

14th – 21st October: Bali Trip to attend the GIN Conference

26th – 30th October: Secondary Camps Week

2nd November: Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences, all day. No school for students, though they are required to attend conferences with their parents.

No photos this time, I’m afraid. Hopefully I’ll have more ready for the next newsletter.

Late Start on Wednesday

A reminder that Wednesday will be a late start day. Secondary students should not arrive at school until 10:15, when they will need to go to homeroom briefly to take attendance, before starting their period 4 classes at 10:30.

We use the Late Start sessions for professional development workshops. This session Secondary teachers will be focusing on Approaches to Learning Skills, which are at the heart of both the MYP and the DP.

New Executive Student Council

Last week we held this year’s elections to elect the leadership group of the Student Council – the SC Executive. I would like to congratulate all the candidates on their campaigns; the hard work that many had put into their campaign speeches was very obvious.

A particularly warm welcome to the winning team: Dinh Hai Ha (President), Kim So Yeon (Vice-President), Baek Sungwook (Secretary), and Kim Jin Seok (Treasurer). I look forward to working with them this year, and to seeing what they come up with and how they aim to build on the work of last year’s team.

Very successful coffee mornings

This morning and last Friday we held Coffee Mornings for parents of G6-10 parents, with a total of about 35-40 parents attending the two events. I was unsure how many would come, so it was a wonderful surprise to see so many of you. We have had a range of parents attending, from those who we see regularly, to new parents, to some who have been here for a while but often cannot join us.

As always, comfort levels with English is a concern, but we seem to be managing in that respect. One of the IB Learner Profile attributes is to be a Risk-Taker, and it is great when we can model this behaviour. Perhaps this will give you something to talk about and share with your children this weekend.

We will schedule further coffee mornings, and I hope you will continue to find them useful. If you have anything you would like to discuss at these sessions, send me an email.

Helping your children with time management

At today’s coffee morning we spoke about supporting students through their studies over the next year or two, and how skills such as planning, organisation and time management are as important as academic ability. In fact, in many cases they are MORE important than academic ability. The brightest, cleverest students will often find that when the work becomes really challenging, and the workload is very heavy, that they have not developed the strategies to deal with this. Our goal, of course, is to avoid this from happening, so helping all students develop good time management skills is important.

Randy Pausch gave a very good lecture containing a lot of extremely good advice and the whole lecture is excellent. But there is one particular section, talking about how to manage to-do lists, which is particularly worth paying attention to and sharing with your children. I’ve embedded the section below.

Open Evening

Thank you to those of you who were able to join us on Tuesday evening for our annual start of the year open evening. I hope you found the opportunity to meet your children’s homeroom and subject teachers useful. In particular, the homeroom teachers are a very important link in the home-school relationship, so please do get in touch with them if you have any concerns or wish to know how your children are getting on in school.

Coffee Mornings

This year we would like to hold semi-regular coffee mornings at HIS with parents from Secondary, to give you a chance to talk to us about school-related issues and for us to share information with you. We hope this will also be a good opportunity for parents to share with each other some of their experiences and ideas about how to support children as they go through the various years.

To start this off, we would like to invite you to attend the following sessions:

Grade 6-8 parents: Friday 28th August, 8 – 9 am.

Grade 9-10 parents: Friday 4th September, 8 – 9 am

You will find these meetings on the school calendar on our website. I will confirm the location of each meeting nearer to the date. The meetings will be conducted in English, but we will work hard to be clear and hopefully parents will support each other with translation where necessary.

CCP Fair

On Thursday this week we held a CCP Fair during the last period for Secondary students to get a look at what is being offered for CCPs this trimester. As well as some of the well-known activities such as MUN, Cooking, and MRISA practice, other activities such as Improv, Science Practicals, Lego Robotics, and Cheerleading are on offer, as well as several music-related groups. Many of the activities are student-led, providing opportunities for our students to share their passions and develop their leadership skills.

A reminder that we expect all students to complete at least one CCP activity per year. Ideally, of course, we’d like them to complete more than one, and I hope many students will take up a wide range of the opportunities on offer.

Student Council Elections

This is the time of year when the student body elects this year’s Student Council. Two students are elected from each year group, then there is the Student Council Executive (President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer) who are elected from amongst the older students. Together, they form the Student Council, this year guided & supported by Ms Cathy & Mr Daniel, who will organise and lead a range of social activities for students but who also represent the student body if they have any issues or suggestions they wish to discuss with the school administration.

The stairwell filled up with posters very quickly over the past couple of days as students began their campaigning for the Executive positions. I wish them all the best of luck. Over the past few years we have seen the Student Council grow in confidence and leadership and I look forward to seeing how this year’s team make their mark and contribute to HIS over the coming year.

This weekend, I believe the candidates will be working on their Election speeches, which they will give in Assembly on Tuesday. If your child is a candidate, perhaps you might ask them to practice their speech on you!

Student-Parent Handbooks

These were distributed to students this week, you should have received a copy. If you do not have one, please speak to your child’s homeroom teacher. In the meantime, you can find a digital version at this link: HIS Secondary Parent Handbook 2015-16

How to Learn Maths: For teachers & parents

Stanford University are offering an online course for parents and teachers which looks at how mathematics teaching has changed and why it is often so different from what we remember from when we were children. If anyone is struggling to support their children with their mathematics, you might find this course of interest. There is a cost of $125, but it does look very interesting indeed.

If anyone does take the course, I’d love to hear from you about it.

Dates for your Diary

This is a summary of events related to the Secondary School. You can find much of this information on the School calendar on the website which you can subscribe to via your phone, tablet, or a range of other services.

Welcome to the 2015-16 academic year. As I write this we are putting finishing touches on everything so we’re ready for your children to join us tomorrow morning. I am looking forward to seeing both new and returning students and hearing about their summer experiences. I have already met a number of returning students who have expressed their excitement about starting school again – which I am delighted to hear!

There have been a number of changes over the summer and I am sure you will hear about them over the next few days. Below, for example, are a few photos of the music room, which has been made a much nicer space. Mr Grant is really enjoying the new space and is really looking forward to welcoming everyone in.

One very important piece of news – we are now officially an MYP Candidate school. As the official letter confirming this says:

Hanoi International School is a candidate school* for the Middle Years Programme. This school is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. These are schools that share a common philosophy—a commitment to high quality, challenging, international education that Hanoi International School believes is important for our students.

*Only schools authorized by the IB Organization can offer any of its three academic programmes: the Primary Years Programme (PYP), the Middle Years Programme (MYP), or the Diploma Programme (and in addition the IB Career-related Certificate). Candidate status gives no guarantee that authorization will be granted.

For further information about the IB and its programmes, visit http://www.ibo.org

We will, of course, be working very hard to ensure that authorization is granted. I have no doubt we will be successful!

As with last year, I will use this blog to publish a two-weekly newsletter with news, dates, and photos. If you have not done so already, please consider subscribing to this blog so that you do not miss any posts.

Once again, welcome back. I am really looking forward to the year ahead!

I am afraid we made quite a big mistake with the awards this semester. This has particularly affected students with A* grades, which accidentally were not counted.

We are checking every student’s record now and fixing this mistake, and all the missing or incorrect certificates will be awarded to students at our first assembly when we return in August. For students who are leaving HIS, the awards will be in the Main Office and they will be able to collect them at any time.

I do apologise for this mistake and will endeavour to ensure that this does not happen again in the future.

Welcome to the latest (and late!) issue of our bi-weekly newsletter. Following this blog is one of the best ways to keep up with what is happening in Secondary@HIS.

I started writing this last Friday, but then got caught up with Graduation and a whole lot of other things. One of my goals for next year will be to find a way that makes it easier to bring this out more consistently on time!

In this issue:

Goodbye Grade 12

Grade 8 Humanities Urbanization Videos

Plans to strengthen our Mother Tongue programme

Changes to reporting for next year

Silent movies in Grade 7 Music

Dates for your Diary

Photo Gallery

Goodbye Grade 12

One of our happiest and saddest moments each year has to be the Grade 12 Graduation. We are always proud and happy to see them in this transition moment, that instant when they go from being school students to the next stage in their lives. But it is also a moment of sadness. We do enjoy their company, and seeing them grow over the years, and this is a moment of saying goodbye. Personally, I taught many of the group in mathematics for the past two years, and I wish them, and the rest of the class, the best of luck for their future. Hopefully, they’ll stay in touch so we can hear about their experiences.

Grade 8 Humanities Urbanization Video

I watched these videos recently and was very impressed by the critical thinking and reasoning being demonstrated by this group of students. One of the things we strive to achieve with students is for them to become more open-minded and able to see multiple sides of issues – and here we can see those skills in action.

Plans to strengthen our Mother Tongue Programme

We use the term ‘mother tongue’ to refer to the main language that each of us speaks. Having a strong mother tongue (MT) is essential as this enables us to think and work with more complex ideas. It is very often the case that students whose MT is not well-developed also have lower levels of skill in English, and this has an impact in all subject areas.

At HIS, the most dominant MTs are Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese and we are fortunate to be able to directly support these students with Language & Literature classes from Grade 8 upwards. From next year, we are hoping to also be able to provide classes for these languages to native speakers in Grades 6 & 7. There are some logistical and staffing issues we still need to sort out, but this is what we are planning.

In the future, we will be looking at what we can do to help speakers of other languages to develop their MT. Although we are unlikely to be able to provide scheduled classes, there are other ways we can provide support, such as providing space for parents to come in and work with their children, and providing access to resources to support MT growth.

Summer is a really good time for students to spend some time reinforcing their mother tongue. Reading is a particularly good activity – it doesn’t matter what they read as long as they DO read. Getting them to also write in their MT would also be beneficial.

Changes to reporting for next year

We have been looking at the ways in which we report to parents and share with you progress information about how your children are getting on at school. We want to make sure that you have regular access to information about your children’s progress. Reports provide an important snapshot of how your child has performed at the end of a semester, but we want to ensure that you can also work with and support them throughout the year.

One of the things we will be doing is giving Secondary parents access to ManageBac. Your children already have this access, and you will be able to see almost exactly the same information. We should have everything ready to give you access around the end of Quarter 1 next year, but in the meantime, why not sit down with your child and have them give you a tour of what ManageBac does and how they use it.

We will definitely make use of the online booking system again, as that worked so well this year. Details of Reporting dates, including the conferences, will be ready for you in August when we return, and we will also run workshops to help you make use of ManageBac.

Silent movies in Grade 7 Music

Mr Grant shared some videos in assembly earlier this week – lots of fun. Students composed soundtracks to accompany old silent movies. Just imagine you are in an old movie theatre and there is someone down the front playing along on a piano.

We are nearing the end of the year now and everything at school is very much focused around wrapping things up, finishing things off, and getting ready for next year. The DP & IGCSE exams are well underway and some students have almost finished. Over the next few weeks we’ll have our final MRISA events of the year, the Grade 12 Graduation at Lotte, lots of assessments in classes throughout Secondary, the final Student Council event of the year, and a few other events. We start to think about those teachers and students who will be moving on this year, and about plans for the summer holidays. We are also doing a lot of preparation work behind the scenes to ensure that we are ready for a good start again in August.

In this week’s issue

MRISA Invitational Swim Meet at UNIS

GIN? Bali? Sounds like fun!

Codeathon

Dates for your Diary

Photo Gallery

Second Annual Swim Gala at UNIS

This Swim Gala is in its second year and will involve students from schools all around Hanoi. We would like to make a good showing at this event and are seeking Secondary students who would enjoy participating. The deadline for entries is May 18th, interested parents or students should speak to Mr Adam, Mr Andy, or Ms Ceri.

GIN? Bali? Sounds like fun!

Earlier this year, HIS hosted a group of students from Canggu International School in Bali who were on a tour of Vietnam, led by Mr Buxton who previously taught here. Through that visit, we were invited to send a group of students to participate in their annual Global Issues Networking Youth Conference, taking place in early October. Mr Chad has organised a fantastic 8 day trip to Bali which will include the GIN conference as well as give students the opportunity to see a little more of the region.

This trip will be open to students in Grades 10-12 and will give them a chance to develop connections with other students from around the region, as well as getting some ideas of what they can do to help tackle some of the global issues we are currently facing. For older students, this trip will contribute to their CAS programmes. If you or your student are interested in this trip, please contact Mr Chad for more information, before June 5th.

Codeathon

Mr Dan was involved in running the Codeathon that took place recently at UNIS. Here are some of his comments about the event. It sounds like it went really well, perhaps we can get more students involved next time.

The event was about getting students in grades 3-6 to Create, Connect and be Challenged.

70 students met at UNIS (9 from HIS) on Saturday, May 9th for the event.

In total there were 18 schools with over 300 students. These schools met remotely via Google Hangout and were as far away as Johannesburg and Addis Ababa. Even a school in California participated although only their teacher stayed up till midnight to check in. They did their Codeathon the next day.

Dong Nguyen (the creator of Flappy Bird) did the Keynote speech.

Ji Uk (grade 6) competed in the Advanced Competition. His game can be found here. Perhaps you might like to go and play it!

Photo Gallery

A very biased gallery this week, I’m afraid. I spent Saturday at the Lego Robotics Kickoff at UNIS, where about 60 students from around the city had a lot of fun, including 9 from HIS. It was great to see them interacting with each other, as well as their enthusiasm and creative thinking. Several of our group were in medal-winning teams!

We are seriously looking at how it might be possible to incorporate this into various parts of the curriculum. If any parents have any interest/experience in this area, I would love to hear from you.